


Where I Unravel

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: But Not Too Far Post, Dreams, Emotional Idiots In Love, Hannibal Thinks His Nightmares Are Sexy, Kinkshame Hannibal Lecter 2K16 And Forever, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Will's Brain Still Working Some Shit Out In His Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7401715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will's grip on the sheets is grounding enough to move him closer to wakefulness.  He edges close enough to become aware that the water is talking to him again, warm in his ear, licking at his throat.  It’s true French and not the Cajun French he distantly remembers from childhood, but it’s close enough or the dream generous enough for him to understand.  <span class="u">Will</span>, again.  <span class="u">Will, come back. Be here with me.</span></i>
</p><p> </p><p>Or: The one in which I've owned WrathoftheStag a little something based loosely on <a href="http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com/post/139492288976/sherlocks-freebitch-damnslippyplanet">Will's inappropriately sexy drowning dreams</a> for ages, and what better time than her birthday to provide it?  Even if it didn't get done quite in time for her actual birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where I Unravel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WrathoftheStag (Mwuahna)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mwuahna/gifts).



In the dream there are two of Will: The small voice that knows it’s dreaming, knows and yells and is not heard, and the part of him that’s sinking by inches and doesn’t know that somewhere on the other side of the rising waters he’ll come awake, unharmed.

 _Relatively_ unharmed. Given where he is, and who he’s with.

It’s possible that he no longer understands quite what “unharmed” is supposed to mean.  Everything’s a little through-the-looking-glass these days, since the cliff.

In the dream the bed is a bed, or it’s a raft, or it’s the broad back of a sea turtle, or it’s Hannibal’s kitchen counter, or his desk at Quantico.  It shifts when he blinks.  The waters rise and fall.

Drowning would be simpler. He’s done drowning. ( _They’ve_ done drowning.)

This is something else.  Nothing about the dream is simple.  

The waves whisper when they reach high enough to lick at his ears, a low rough rumble in which the clearest word is his name.   _Will,_ the waves press into his skin, stroke against his arms and legs.   _Will,_ and he doesn’t need the rest to be words to know that the ocean (the river, the lake, the tears, the blood) wishes to consume him.

Consumption has its appeal, and it’s possible that when he thrashes so hard to pull himself above the undertow it’s only because he doesn’t really _want_ to fight it at all.

( _You don’t have to fight so hard anymore_ , Hannibal had said a few nights earlier, when Will had picked a meaningless fight about nothing in particular just to prove to himself he still could. _You don’t have to push just to prove I'll come back._ Will had briefly considered stabbing him, kissing him, or slapping him, and the awful part of that wasn’t that _Hannibal_ would barely have seen the difference, but that _Will’s_ starting to lose track of it too.)

The tide recedes, temporarily, when he fights it hard enough.  It makes a little space for breath and thought, which should be helpful, but instead it only gives him a chance to notice that he wants it back.  The sudden absence of the caressing wavelets leaves his skin aching for touch again, sensitized and then abandoned.

The part of Will that is aware he’s dreaming, and aware that dreams of being willingly consumed are entirely unsafe for him, would really like for him to _not_ be mostly-hard right now, pulled taut and aching.  It’s embarrassing and unwise.  

The rest of him shivers and stills, tense and wanting, until the waters start to rise again.

When they do, his hands twist in the bedsheets for want of anything else solid to touch.  The water can’t be held. It escapes any attempt to keep it even while droplets cling to his skin of their own accord.

His grip on the sheets is grounding enough to move him closer to wakefulness.  He edges close enough to become aware that the water is talking to him again, warm in his ear, licking at his throat.  It’s true French and not the Cajun French he distantly remembers from childhood, but it’s close enough or the dream generous enough for him to understand.  

 _Will_ , again.   _Will, come back. Be here with me._

It’s the thought that water shouldn’t speak French that wakes him. Had it spoken English he might have dreamed for hours yet, a slow sensuous torture of a dream.

But he wakes, vague and dazed, to the water’s voice that is Hannibal’s voice that tickles at his ear as Hannibal’s hand soothes down the length of Will’s body, side and hip and thigh and up again. Everywhere but where Will really wants to be touched.  His body’s telling him that Hannibal’s been at this aimless but calculated petting for a while, that it’s needy and aching for more, that he still wants to be consumed.

Will manages a querying sort of preverbal noise and earns a kiss for his pains, pressed warm against the side of his neck from where Hannibal lies behind and against him.  

“There you are. You were dreaming. You sounded distressed, I thought perhaps I should wake you.”

Hannibal sounds terribly considerate, terribly concerned, but there’s a predatory edge underneath. It’s no secret to Will that Hannibal enjoys the extremes of his emotions, even the less pleasant ones. Admiring what he can’t entirely experience himself, perhaps…

But that’s as far as that thought gets, because apparently his consciousness was all Hannibal needed to finish whatever game he’s been playing out in his own mind for however long Will’s been drifting between dreams.

(It’s an improvement, probably, in their complicated relationship, that Hannibal wants him awake and willing now. No more drugs, no more flashing lights or elaborate fictions, just this: Hannibal’s fingertips trailing inward from Will’s hipbone, brushing lightly through the dark coarse hair there before he takes Will in hand. Will still at a loss for speech but managing a wordless sort of sigh, encouraging and wanting and _oh -- )_

Will’s barely awake, only just figuring out that he’s no longer dreaming, and he’s got no defenses at all prepared against the sudden onslaught of sensation.  His body’s lightyears ahead of his brain and it hardly takes anything to tip him over.  He couldn’t hold his orgasm off if he wanted and he doesn’t want to - gasps and shudders and clings fiercely to being _here,_ in the strange bed that’s only just beginning to feel not-strange (to feel like _theirs),_ with Hannibal wrapped tightly around him and gentling him through the aftershocks of startling, searing pleasure almost before he realizes he's feeling it.

Awake, adored, _alive_.

“Shit,” he finally finds voice to mumble, breathless, burying his face in Hannibal’s arm where it’s wrapped underneath him and holding him close.  “Hell of a cure for dreams, doctor.”

The little humming sound Hannibal makes could be amusement, or simply contentment. Or it could be Hannibal scenting what’s left of Will’s fear.  It’s a measure of something - foolishness, recklessness, love - that Will doesn’t feel moved to try to determine which it is, but only sighs and shifts so he isn’t pinning Hannibal’s arm quite so thoroughly.

“I did _try_ waking you in a more typical fashion. You weren’t responsive, so I had to improvise.”

“Sure, you did.”  Will is less than convinced, but also doesn’t care.  He twists his head around enough to seek for a kiss, and gets one, lingering and sweeter than anything between the two of them has any right to be.  “Thanks for waking me up.”

“Tell me about your dream.”

That’s amusement, for sure - their old roles, psychiatrist and patient, echoing through their new life. _Tell me about your sleepwalking, Will…_  It’s slipping away already, but Will remembers enough to play Hannibal’s game.

“You’re going to be disappointed. Not a weird nightmare creature in sight, hardly any blood.”

“I couldn’t possibly be disappointed.”

“Mm.”  

 _We’ll see_ , Will means, but he doesn’t really feel like being obstreperous on general principle, at the moment.  He’s comfortable and sated and the fear of the dream is rapidly receding.  Eventually, he supposes, he’ll get used to how easily the former source of his nightmares is now his relief from them.  Sooner or later.  Probably not tonight.

“I was drowning,” he says, letting himself lean backward into Hannibal’s warmth and unlikely comfort.  “It was like there were two of me…”

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from the lyrics to "I Follow Rivers" by Lykke Li, although I'm partial to the [Jason Isbell/Amanda Shires version.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMav-PA5g4&index=30&list=LLWczY70eQf9GjsOy6hxnZgQ)


End file.
